Chapter 14

"I couldn't bring myself to speak about that until we were by ourselves," said Miss Ocky. She looked up at Bates with a friendly glance. "I know you won't repeat anything, Bates! The trouble between Simon and his son grew out of Copley's attachment for Sheila Graham. I like her extremely, so I found myself in opposition to Simon. I cast myself in the role of the heavy fairy godmother and took a hand in shaping the destinies of the young couple--a fond aunt has an inalienable right to barge into her nephew's affairs, hasn't she?"

"Second only to a grandmother's," he assured her.

"I persuaded them to elope," confessed Miss Ocky. "No date was set for it that I heard of. Yesterday Copley succeeded in finding a job on the Hambleton _News_ as a reporter--and the editor, Mr. Barlow, when he arrived here this morning to cover this story told me that the boy had immediately celebrated his getting a job by asking for a two-week vacation to attend to some personal business. He left Hambleton last night for parts unknown. Meanwhile, Sheila Graham had gone to visit friends in New York for a fortnight. If you're a good detective, Mr. Creighton, you may make the right deduction."

"He started off on a honeymoon the very day his father was murdered. Rather--unpleasant coincidence."

"It struck me that way. I've been keeping mum just on that account. Norvallis was apparently satisfied with a statement that Copley is temporarily absent and that we are trying to get in touch with him."

"Norvallis is a very amiable gentleman; he has his reasons for being so, I think. As for Copley--well, a good many newspapers will carry the story of what happened last night and he will undoubtedly read it by to-morrow morning--possibly this evening. Then he will come home."

"Keeping his marriage--if there was one--dark, I trust. With the opposition--er--removed, I think it would be more suitable to have a public ceremony after a decent interval."

"Um. A matter of taste, perhaps. Personally, I've seen so much trouble caused by secret marriages that I'm inclined to eye them doubtfully. But--may I ask you a few questions about the less romantic adventures of the young man? Mrs. Varr declared this afternoon that her husband had driven him from the house. Was their disagreement--violent?"

"You must make allowances for my sister's nervous condition," answered Miss Ocky quickly. Her perceptions were instantly alive to whither this shift in the conversation might lead, and she resolved to limit the information she gave him as much as possible to the facts he would surely discover for himself. "Simon and Copley talked over the situation, night before last; Lucy naturally exaggerates the affair."

"Mr. Varr and his son quarreled. Isn't that the plain truth?"

"Doesn't a quarrel depend somewhat on the natures of the two people involved, Mr. Creighton? Simon was fearfully obstinate, and Copley is a little high-tempered--just to the extent that is becoming to a young man with any spirit--and I suppose that what might be merely a normal discussion between two such natures might--might seem like a quarrel to other people. Mightn't it?" she added, not very hopefully.

Despite himself, the detective was forced to grin at this ingenuous, or ingenious, argument.

"They quarreled," he summed it up, regaining his gravity. "If you will recollect, Miss Copley, when you came into the sitting-room a while ago you excused your sister's indisposition on the plea that she had been through enough the last _two_ days to wreck an Amazon. Why _two_ days, unless it was the quarrel between her husband and her son that worried her all of yesterday?"

"Oh, heavens! You're worse than a dictaphone!" Miss Ocky made a face at him. "There's no help for it--I must go into a silence."

"Please don't, until I've asked one more thing. You can answer freely, or the station master will. If Copley went to town last night, what trains were available?"

"Only one," she admitted slowly. "There's a through train from the West that stops at Hambleton for water--at midnight!"

"Ah," said Peter Creighton, then wished he hadn't.

A high-tempered youth--a pig-headed father--a balked romance--a quarrel--a murder at eleven and a train away at midnight. These facts paraded through Creighton's brain and to a certain extent got ready to parade right on out of it. He could think all around a given subject, as he had described the process to Jason Bolt, and he was no fool to commit himself to half-baked hypotheses. Any theory of Copley's guilt could be countered with the same objection he made to Krech's hasty indictment of Mrs. Varr; a boy like that might strike down a man in the heat of passion but he would hardly set himself to calculated murder--or if he did, he would certainly arrange a better finish than a clumsy attempt at flight.

He became aware that Miss Copley was watching him anxiously while he meditated. He met her eyes--very nice eyes they were, he reflected--and it was too bad they should reveal fear, as they had since his monosyllabic exclamation.

"Are--are you suggesting--"

"Nothing, Miss Copley--nothing! Frankly and honestly! If you will permit me to say so, I think you are trying to make a mountain out of this molehill yourself. I haven't a doubt in the world that your nephew will turn up with every minute of last evening properly accounted for." He welcomed the slow reversion to normal of her expression. "Come, if I'm a dictaphone, let's pretend I'm turned off! Shall we talk of something else than murder? One might as well dine to jazz!"

That brought a smile to her lips--a quavery, uncertain little smile but an augury of better ones to come.

"With all my heart," she agreed. "What are your conversational preferences?"

"Anything but shop. May I ask you a personal question?"

"Personal questions are always the most interesting."

"I've heard you addressed once or twice as 'Miss Ocky,' and I've been wondering just what the abbreviation stands for?"

"Oh! You've landed squarely on a sore spot, but no matter. My father, bless him, was one of the dearest men that ever lived, but now and then he would get some particularly quaint idea into his head and proceed to carry it out in spite of every opposition. I arrived in this world on a chilly autumn day and was duly presented to my father's gaze. He was quite inexperienced about babies and it's recorded of him that he stared at me aghast and said: 'My gad, what a bleak-looking object!' That inspired some by-standing lunatic to observe that I doubtless took after the month, and my father promptly exclaimed: 'October! What a jolly fine name for her. We'll call her October!'" Miss Ocky sighed resignedly. "They let him get away with it. I was christened October. It has the sole merit of being distinctive!"

"My golly!" Creighton had listened to the concluding phrases of her anecdote with wonderment writ large on his face. He carefully put his knife and fork on his plate and leaned back in his chair while he continued to regard her with a rapt expression. "Are _you_ October Copley?"

"Yes!" laughed the lady.

"_The_ October Copley?"

"I'm quite unique, I believe," said Miss Ocky cheerfully.

"Did _you_ write 'Thibetan Trails,' 'Passages from Persia' and those bully Chinese things with the queer title?"

"'Chiliads of China.' Yes, I wrote 'em. Don't sit there and tell me you've read them!"

"Read them--I've _loved_ them! It's a wonder I didn't connect your name with them at once. My wits have been woolgathering. But, hang it! Who could have expected to find an internationally famous writer and traveler stuck away in this corner of the world? Why haven't seventeen or ninety people _told_ me who you were?"

She laughed at his eager interest.

"A prophet is without honor in his own country," she said. "To my family I'm just Ocky; to the natives of Hambleton I'm only 'that Copley girl with the queer name who's come back from furrin parts'."

She laughed again, half surprised and half embarrassed, as he suddenly rose from his chair, marched around the table, shook hands with her and solemnly marched back again to his seat.

"Meeting a stray Miss Copley is one thing," he assured her. "Meeting October Copley is quite another matter."

It was impossible for her not to be touched by such sincere, whole-hearted enthusiasm. Her throat tightened queerly. Bates, too, an astonished spectator of the scene, was discreetly impressed. A stand-offishness that he had felt toward Peter Creighton, the detective, was weakened in favor of a man who thus appreciated his own Miss Ocky. An artist in simple gestures, he testified to his new approbation by refilling the wineglass beside Creighton's plate.

"Now, tell me what you are doing here. I can't believe it is really you sitting opposite me, there! If any one had asked me ten minutes ago where I supposed you might be, I would have answered that you were probably hunting hippopotamusses in the Himalayas or--or--"

"Tigers in Africa!" suggested Miss Ocky. "No, here I really am." Creighton had already noticed that she was usually divided between two moods, an amused, faintly mocking one, and another that had somehow an undercurrent of sadness. This last seemed to hold her as she added, "Here to stay, I think. My wanderings are done and now I must--settle down."

"Another great light has just burst on me," exclaimed Creighton. "Janet Mackay! She must be the companion you refer to so often in your travel books. By golly, was it she who dove beneath an ice-pack and brought you back to the air-hole through which you had fallen?"

"That was indeed Janet! I repaid the favor later by valiantly dashing into a burning hotel and releasing her from a beam that had dropped across her--well, she'd call 'em limbs! Regular movie stuff. Yes, Janet and I are now fearfully responsible for each other."

"There was no mention of the fire in any of your books."

"Mmph. I'd be apt to bust into print with that, wouldn't I? But I don't mind informing you--just between us girls, as your friend Mr. Krech would say--that you're in the presence of an honest-to-goodness heroine!"

"I knew that," said Peter Creighton simply.

There followed for him a somewhat curious evening. No detective worth his salt will permit extraneous matters to thrust themselves between his mind and the immediate problem with which it should be occupied, and Creighton really had a very high sense of duty. When they had taken themselves out of the house and settled down in the cozy corner of the big veranda, he punctiliously strove to concentrate on a dagger and a notebook and a murder, but ever and anon, as he tried to post himself on the manifold ramifications of the affair to date, the conversation would persist in taking unexpected trips to the Orient. His interest in this topic was so keen that he blamed these divagations on himself, and since a clever woman is cleverer than the cleverest man, it never once occurred to him that the guiding-reins of their talk lay in a pair of slender, capable, sun-browned hands. Miss Ocky preferred almost any subject that evening to the one of paramount importance.

He sat a while after she bade him good-night and left him, his thoughts a medley of vague impressions, confused, half-formed, inchoate. He tried to fix his mind on Simon Varr and ended by surrendering it to the vivid, vital personality of Miss Ocky.

When he went upstairs to his room the first object that caught his attention was a slender volume, beautifully bound, that lay on his dressing-table. "The Mystery of Lhasa." He had not heard of that one. A glance at the title-page accounted for that. Privately printed. On the flyleaf, inscribed in a bold, dashing hand, were the words, "For Peter Creighton--a master of mysteries--from October Copley."

"That's mighty nice of her," he told himself, putting it down. "Golly, what a woman! She has packed more life into each of her years than most men get in their three-score-and-ten."

The hour was early for his metropolitan standards. He thought of the balcony outside his window, and forthwith carried a comfortable chair to that cool retreat. He had lighted a cigar and established himself contentedly before a low voice challenged him from the darkness to the right.

"So you have found your little veranda!"

"Hello, Miss Copley! You got one too?"

"Yes. I come out here nearly every evening for an hour before going to bed. I love to watch the stars."

"No dearth of them in these skies."

"If we could look beyond them we might read the Riddle of the Universe. I think we could--I think so!" Here was the undercurrent of sadness again, sounding through an odd intensity of tone. "Surely, there is something beyond them. There must be! What do you think?"

"I know there is. If you sat here long enough, Miss Copley, I believe your doubts would be set at rest."

"What do you mean? What is behind the stars?"

"The dawn," he told her seriously. "These windows must face due East." He mused briefly. "They also command a partial view of that kitchen garden, come to think of it! You didn't happen to see or hear any--last evening--"

"What a one-track mind!" lamented Miss Ocky. "_No!_"

They talked until very late.

_XVII: An Arrest is Made_

At eleven o'clock the next morning, the ground-floor of the big house was again invaded by a heterogeneous collection of people drawn thither by the coroner's inquest into the death of Simon Varr. Some were there as witnesses or because they had a personal interest in the proceedings, some because they were part of the legal machinery, and many because they were driven by morbid curiosity. The Coroner, an alert, bewhiskered old gentleman named Merton, took possession of the big living-room and had one end of it fenced off with chairs the better to mark the dignified exclusiveness of his court.

As on the previous day, the end of the veranda around the corner from the front of the house escaped the notice of the invading horde. Creighton spent the early part of the morning there, after a solitary breakfast, reading the morning paper attentively. Barlow, the editor, had covered the story of the murder with a competent pencil. The account was graphic, lucid and comprehensive, a credit to himself and his paper. When Creighton had finished its careful perusal he was posted on many details of the case that sheer lack of time had prevented him from learning the day before. With a considerable degree of satisfaction, however, he noted that he had unearthed a fair amount of information that the industrious scribe had missed.

Only second in interest to the big story itself was the half-column on an inner page devoted to the jail-breaking exploit of Mr. Charles Maxon--which would certainly have been largely featured at any other time. Some lesser scribe on Barlow's staff had been assigned to this minor item of news. He had gotten hold of the unfortunate Moody, and under the caption, "Der Jail Is Oudt" he had written a racy, humorous account of a Lady-Fair with Knockout Drops, a Resourceful Romeo and a hoodwinked Jailer. It ended with the statement that Romeo and the Lady were still missing, and that a ticket agent on night duty at the railroad station had seen two muffled figures unostentatiously board the last car of the midnight train without the formality of buying tickets.

"That means they'll have had to pay on the train," mused Creighton, "and of course the conductor will remember to what point they bought transportation when the police get around to asking him. Um. Would a murderer leave a trail as clear as that? I think not!"

It still lacked half-an-hour of the time set for the inquest. Creighton was smoking a cigarette and mentally digesting the information gleaned from the newspaper when Jason Bolt, accompanied by Krech and Miss Ocky, came swooping down upon him.

"Developments!" said Jason, his face wreathed in smiles. "I've found out what Norvallis has up his sleeve. Want to know?"

"I certainly do," said Creighton. "How did you find out?"

"Small-town stuff," declared Bolt cheerfully. "You can't keep a thing dark in the country. Our local Chief of Police is sore as a pup because Norvallis, when he gave the paper the story yesterday, failed to give him credit for fixing the hour of the murder by the dry ground beneath the body. Steiner--that's the chief--came to see me this morning at the office to make some inquiries about the fire the other night. He accepted a cigar, got to talking about his troubles--and didn't hesitate to tell me the county officers' theory when I asked him what it was."

"Charlie Maxon?" asked Creighton when Bolt paused for breath--and from the corner of his eye saw Miss Ocky give a little start.

"You've guessed it," admitted Jason a trifle disappointedly. "I confess I don't think much of their case, but Charlie Maxon is their choice. He broke jail just after ten o'clock and came up here. That is definitely proved to their satisfaction, at least, by footprints recognized as his in the soft earth beside Simon's body. They were identical with some he'd left when he came up here on an earlier tomato-swiping raid. Norvallis swore out a warrant yesterday afternoon and started a couple of sleuths on the trail of Maxon and his lady friend, and they were arrested early this morning in the village of Chiswick, about fifty miles down the line. What do you think of that?"

"What is the charge?"

"Indefinite. They're to be held on suspicion of being concerned in the murder. That's why I say it sounds like a weak case."

"How do they trace the dagger to Maxon?"

"He is supposed to have an accomplice." Bolt looked a little more serious. "Steiner was more cautious on that point--or else he was not so much in the know. There was a discharged clerk named Langhorn who accompanied Billy Graham to this house on the night of the robbery. Langhorn must have recognized the notebook in Simon's hand during that interview, and it was common knowledge among the clerks in the tannery that it contained valuable matter. The police theory is that he took advantage of Simon's absence at the fire to sneak back to the house, enter the study and steal the book--using the dagger and carrying it off with him afterward. He was seen talking to a man on the evening of the murder at the corner of an alley behind the lock-up. The county crowd think that man was Maxon, that Maxon was two-thirds drunk at least, and that Langhorn gave him the knife and egged him on to kill Simon. That's the gist of it."

"Um. Why should Langhorn flirt with the hangman? Discharged clerks don't necessarily revenge themselves to that extent!"

"He wouldn't tell me if he could--and I don't believe he can!"

"There is something I don't understand," broke in Miss Ocky, frowning thoughtfully. "Can a possibly innocent man be held just on suspicion like that? Surely, Norvallis must have strong proofs."

"I may be doing him an injustice," answered Creighton quietly, "but I think I have discovered the reason for Mr. Norvallis' activities. I rather wondered why he was thrusting himself so eagerly into the investigation instead of leaving it to the detectives. Yesterday I saw a poster on a fence by the tannery and learned that he is up for County-Attorney at the coming State election!" He caught a flicker of comprehension in Jason's eye, but Miss Ocky and Krech looked blank. "Don't you see? Here's a murder--a notable murder--committed in his county a few weeks before election. He has to do something. Maxon obligingly implicates himself enough to warrant his being held. Norvallis arrests him. He can easily juggle things along until the ballots have dropped in the box--meanwhile demonstrating that he's an active, zealous and conscientious officer!"

"You've hit it," declared Bolt. "He's that kind."

"But that's--_vile_!" cried Miss Ocky.

"We'll give him the benefit of one doubt," said Creighton. "He probably would not do that to a man he believed innocent; undoubtedly he is convinced that Maxon is guilty and will fight tooth-and-nail to convict."

"Well--is he right?" asked Bolt slowly. A dull red flushed his cheeks. "Did Maxon do it?"

"I'm confident that he did not," said Creighton. A pressure of his arm against his breast brought a crackle of paper and the comfortable assurance that his chip from the blade of the dagger was safe. "Don't press me for reasons yet, Mr. Bolt."

"I won't." Jason rose as Bates came around the corner to say the inquest had opened. "Take your time, sir, but get me that notebook!"

The proceedings went swiftly and smoothly from beginning to end. Whether or not he was a particularly good coroner--and Creighton felt some doubt of that--Merton was certainly expert in the technique of his job. He handled his witnesses capably, with deftness and dispatch, extracting facts from them with the easy grace of a headwaiter pulling corks, and each time a fact popped out he beamed benignly at his jury.

No mention was made of the police theory, and from the way Merton neatly headed off one or two witnesses who came close to trespassing on that forbidden ground, Creighton reckoned that Norvallis had persuaded him to mark time "in the interests of justice." The crowd that had come for a thrill were rewarded by the tale of the black monk, most of which was told by Miss Ocky. Her soft, clear voice carried to every ear, and her cool, matter-of-fact tones seemed rather to accentuate the dramatic values of her testimony than otherwise. It was the highlight of the whole picture, more interesting even than the verdict with its orthodox tag of "person or persons unknown."

"Norvallis hasn't shown his hand," murmured Jason Bolt, who was sitting next to Creighton.

"It'll make a louder splash in the papers to-morrow," retorted the detective cynically.

He had taken care to seat himself at the beginning of the inquest in such a way that he could watch the faces of the spectators who had come to this macabre entertainment. There was so much to the case that was hopelessly dark to him that he dared miss no opportunity to seek something or somebody who might inject even a single ray of light into the murk. He knew that the crowd at any inquest was quite likely to include the very person or persons unknown mentioned in the verdict. He watched the crowd here with a sharp eye for any one who might display a deeper interest than that of the casual ambulance-chaser brand.

He spotted just one among those present who seemed worthy of closer attention. This was a strikingly handsome blond man, middle-aged and well-dressed, who occupied an inconspicuous seat in the farthest corner of the long room. He had about him an air of strained intensity as he leaned forward to follow every word of the testimony, particularly when Miss Ocky was giving hers, and he tugged nervously and continuously at a close-cropped mustache. Creighton could see that his face was haggard and bore lines of worry--and he could see that an unmistakable look of relief came into his eyes as the jury returned its open verdict.

"Interesting," said the detective to himself, and touched Bolt on the arm as the man hurried from the room at the conclusion of the proceedings. "Who is that fair-haired chap just going out?"

"His name is Leslie Sherwood," answered Jason promptly. "He's a native of these parts but he has been out in the great world making lots of money. He has just returned and opened up the old Sherwood place, which has been closed since his father's death a few months ago. Why?"

Creighton was spared a reply by the appearance of a dapper, sharp little old gentleman who came up and greeted Bolt by his first name.